Valve scoops up bright young electrical engineers

Several bright young engineers have been swiped up to work for Valve. Yes, that Valve, the game company. Amongst them are [Jeff Keyser] aka [Mighty ohm] and [Jeri Ellsworth], both names that we have seen on these pages many times. We’ve heard that Valve is a fun and very unique company to work for. Apparently there’s no solid hierarchy.

What we, and everyone else in the universe wants to know is what they are building! There were rumors and speculation of a game console that were quickly squashed. [Michael Abrash] let out some information in an interview that he was doing R&D into wearable computing. He also points out that he was not making a product. So, let the speculation begin!

We asked [Jeri] if this meant she couldn’t publish her own hacks anymore due to contractual agreements, but she said that she can still do them and has some cool stuff coming out soon.

Reading down the required skill set, ARM/x86 system bring up, FPGA for ASIC prototyping, RF layout all kinda stand out as indicators that they might be building a console of some sort. I was stumped by HDMI input though.

Passing though video from a regular console? Could be just some kind of anti-piracy dongle or it could be some totally awesome kind of haptic feedback that needs a ton of data bandwidth that bluetooth or usb can’t manage.

They also hired Ben Krasnow. http://benkrasnow.blogspot.ca/http://www.youtube.com/user/bkraz333
He’s the genius who built his own electronic microscope. I’ve been following his channel ever since and am still impressed by what he can come up with. He’s an information sponge! He’s knowledgeable in electronics, chemistry and physics. I’m really curious as to what he’s doing at Valve! In the comments of one of his videos, he once said that he wasn’t working on software, but that he couldn’t say more.